Sociological Study of the Determinants of Normalization of Research Misbehavior

Nowadays, promoting academic loyalty and ethics and coping with research misbehavior, including plagiarism, forgery and misrepresentation have become an important part of the university mission, since the normalization of research misconduct undermines the integrity and loyalty of science, the link between science, society, industry, and damages the reputation of scientific institutions. Accordingly, the main target of the present study was to study the determinants of research misbehavior normalization among the postgraduate students of Tabriz University. The research method is applied in terms of purpose and is a survey in terms of data collection. The statistical population of the study consisted of 6651 postgraduate students of Tabriz University, of whom 729 students were selected through stratified random sampling method and Cochran formula. In this study, a questionnaire was used for data collection. The findings of the present study showed that the level of research misbehavior normalization was higher than the average (59.88). The results of the stepwise regression analysis showed that the variables included in the model, namely social pressure, academic and the Ministry of Science Research and Technology supervision were able to explain 0.18% of the variance in the normalization of research misbehavior. By comparing the beta coefficients, it can be said that social pressure (B=39) has the strongest influence on the normalization of research misbehavior among the selected students.